The president of a prominent home-school education group has confirmed to the Des Moines Register that Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign misused an e-mail distribution list maintained by the group.

As was initially reported by The Iowa Republican this morning, the Bachmann campaign sent two e-mails to addresses gleaned from the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators’ distribution list.

In an interview with the Register, NICHE President Justin LaVan confirmed the authenticity of a message he sent to group supporters that was obtained and reproduced by TIR.

In that message. LaVan described the Bachmann campaign’s use of the e-mail list as “inadvertent,” but said the group would seek compensation for it.

It is unclear exactly how the campaign came to possess the list — which LaVan said contained the e-mail addresses of “many thousands” of home-school families, advocates, donors, vendors and businesses — although Bachmann staffer Barbara Heki also has been a NICHE board member.

Nonetheless, Heki’s current status with the home-school organization has become ambiguous.

LaVan declined to comment when asked whether Heki was still a board member, but said the group was “hoping to finalize something” on Friday.

Heki herself, meanwhile, said she would not speak for either NICHE or the Bachmann campaign, and referred questions to Bachmann Iowa campaign manager Eric Woolson.

A message left with Woolson earlier today has not been returned (although the campaign has released a statement on the matter).

Regardless of Heki’s status, LaVan said he had several reasons to believe the campaign did not intentionally appropriate the distribution list without permission.

For one thing, the campaign “responded immediately” when approached over the matter, and “did all the right things” to ensure the list wouldn’t be used again, he said.

That included purging the NICHE list from its files and ensuring its email vendor did the same, LaVan said.

For another, the two e-mails that were sent out in recent weeks were not specific to the home-school community, but appeared instead to be general and unremarkable campaign communications.

“That leads me to think they certainly did not know that it was a home-school list that they’d acquired. …” LaVan said. “That looks to me like the Bachmann campaign is absolutely truthful here that this was inadvertent and some mistake happened here.”

Mistake or not, however, NICHE is seeking repayment for use of the list.

To allay concerns about violating federal election laws restricting corporate donations to political campaigns, LaVan said the group has billed Bachmann the “reasonable rental value” of the list, after checking with several brokerage firms that specialize in e-mail marketing.

Michele Bachmann greeted a University of Northern Iowa student after a speech on education in Cedar Falls on Wednesday (Jason Noble/The Register).

NICHE is a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

LaVan declined to specify how much the campaign was charged, but said Bachmann staffers found it to be “extremely high.”

They agreed to pay it nonetheless.

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Bachmann campaign manager Keith Nahigian expressed “regret” over the situation.

“Bachmann for President was recently notified that two campaign emails were mistakenly sent to a NICHE email list,” Nahigian said in the statement. “When notified by NICHE, the Campaign began working with NICHE to take immediate corrective action to ensure that list was permanently removed from any Campaign records and to pay the fair-market value of the use of the list.

“The campaign regrets any inconvenience this mistake may have caused and is working to enact additional safeguards to ensure that this does not happen again.”

In the spirit of fairness, LaVan said the group also will allow other presidential campaigns to submit two e-mails to its members under the same rates charged to Bachmann.

“I think that’s the fair and right thing to do, because we don’t endorse any campaigns,” he said.

A couple of the campaigns have indicated interest, he said.

In his letter to NICHE member, LeVan said the group noticed its distribution list had been used by the Bachmann campaign due to “safeguards” built into the list.

In his comments to the Register, he added that no e-mail recipients contacted the group to complain about messages from the Bachmann campaign.

“I’m guessing most people are used to being inundated with campaign e-mails,” he said.